June 5, 2007
GOP Must Focus On The Family
National Review Online: Divorces Shouldn't Stop Republican Hopefuls From Speaking Up
-
Play CBS Video
Video
Giuliani On The Iraq War
CBS News RAW: Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani talks to David Letterman about the war in Iraq.
-
Video
Romney On Religion
Only On The Web: Former Mass. governor and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney talks to Mike Wallace about Mormonism and his close family ties.
-
Photo
Rudy Giuliani, left, and John McCain, seen at a Republican presidential debate on May 4, 2007, have both been divorced. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Here we are at debate No. 3, but has anyone heard a Republican besides Mitt Romney utter their one-time favorite word "family?" In fact, most of the top Republican presidential nominees are studiously avoiding the biggest social problem of our time, namely, family breakdown. There's a good reason for this, of course; aside from Romney, the leading candidates, whether committed to running or only flirting, are divorced, and at least one of them has a marital history that verges on the baroque. It's understandable that a presidential contender would want to avoid reminding voters about a messy personal history.
Understandable, but in the end, misguided. There is simply no way to advance the principles that have made for past Republican successes without supporting strong families. Let us count the reasons:
Reason No. 1: Limited Government. Personal liberty and limited government have always been Republican first principles. Despite the current administration's dubious service to these principles, they remain important to most Republicans. The problem for the Republican divorced candidates is that the foundation of limited government lies in strong, self-governing families. You only have to consider the last half century of social-welfare trends: just as divorce and nonmarital childbearing expanded, so too did the government programs and tax dollars needed to support them.
Welfare, still a budget drag even 11 years after welfare reform, is only the most obvious example. Isabel Sawhill at the Brookings Institution estimates that between 1970 and 1996, the growth of single-parent families increased federal welfare and food stamps expenditures by $229 billion. Today, the federal government spends more than $200 billion annually on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and Medicaid spending, and much of this spending is driven by family breakdown. Moreover, marital failure necessarily invites the government to meddle in personal relationships. This year, for instance, federal and state governments will spend more than $5 billion in efforts to identify, hunt down, and collect money from millions of nonresidential fathers across the nation and 17 million families.
Reason No. 2: Law and Order. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was an outlier when he observed over 40 years ago that crime is a marriage and fatherhood issue. Today, the idea that marriage plays a key role in turning boys into law-abiding young men has become the new social scientific consensus. One recent Princeton study found that boys who grew up with their married fathers were half as likely to spend time in jail as boys who grew up in fatherless homes. Another study by Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson agreed that family breakdown was one of the strongest predictors of "urban violence across cities in the United States." With crime rates rising again in many cities, the subject of family breakdown seems like a no-brainer.
Reason No. 3: The American Dream. Republicans have long seen themselves as guardians of the American dream, working to insure that individuals and businesses can prosper in a free society. It's clear by now that prosperity depends on strong families. At the simplest level, married couples earn more money than singles. A large body of research shows married men earning between 10 and 40 percent more than men with similar levels of education and job experience, largely because they work longer, smarter, and more responsibly than their unmarried peers. Marriage is also an important source of wealth generation. On the eve of retirement, the typical married couple has accumulated about $410,000, compared to approximately $167,000 for the never-married, and about $154,000 for the divorced.
Marriage does all this by fostering a common orientation towards the future and a sense of duty among adults, qualities that are also tremendously advantageous to their children. It's no coincidence that children of married couples, including low-income couples, are more likely to graduate high school, to go to college, and to go on to earn higher incomes than kids of single parents. To put it a little differently, marriage provides the breeding ground for children's future upward mobility.
Finally, Reason No. 4: The Vote. If Republican candidates don't find principle enough of a reason to put marriage policy at the top of their agenda, they might want to consider self-interest. Married Americans vote — and vote Republican — at significantly higher rates than do unmarrieds. In the last presidential race, for instance, hitched Americans were more than 50 percent more likely to vote than their singleton fellow citizens, and when they did, they voted for George Bush by a 15-point margin (57 to 42 percent). This is probably because the married have tended to view the party — at least they used to before Republicans became tongue-tied on all things family — as more supportive of a family-centered way of life.
In other words, Republicans have every reason — self-interest, party loyalty, and the American future — to transcend the idea that your personal history has to limit your political beliefs, and to talk about policies that would strengthen and expand the ranks of the married.
Yes, accusations of hypocrisy may fill the airwaves. But chances are Americans, almost all of whom have been touched by the family unraveling of the past 40 years, would be in a forgiving mood. At any rate, they know that while hypocrisy is bad, moral cowardice is worse.
By Kay Hymowitz & W. Bradford Wilcox
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online.
| America's Premier Site for Conservative News, Analysis, and Opinion. |
Video and Galleries from Opinion
-
Video
Robert McNamara's Life
-
Video
Ginuwine On Jackson
-
Video
Andy Sheds Some Clothes
I say HOOEY! These are the same guys who, at the drop of a hat, wanted to run ramrod over Terry Schiavo's husband (remember the "sanctity of marriage?") in the name of their "family values".
Here's my demand to these hypocrites...STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY!
1. "limited government"--Republicans LOVE big government--when it does what they want. Help sick, starving kids? Government out! Provide fat, no-bid contracts to connected corporate bosses?--Send in the Blue-Bellies!
2. "Personal responsibility"?--The Repugniscum love corporations--a legal fiction that exists only so its rich owners can escape persional responsiblity, and liability. Bushit buying his way out of any combat service. Darth Cheney hiding behind his draft deferments while passionately supporting sending other kids to die in Vietnam. On and on.
3. "law and order"--a more corrupt, law-breaking set of felons hasn't occupied the White House since--well since Ronnie Raygun and Tricky dicky--Republiscum both. Pardons for Libby anyone?
3. "The American Dream"--for owners of offshore corporations only. Fat tax giveaways to the richest 1000 families while making bankruptcy impossible to obtain by families ruined by the medical establishment (Repub supporters).
4. "marriage policy"--like Newt gingrich boinking his secretary while divorcing his cancer-ridden wife?
I nominate this piece for a comedy fiction award!
BTW gkc99 - nice rebuttal!
A bunch of hypocrits who claim to talk to God, but aren't faithful to their wives, and don't mind stealing money from the poor with all their tax breaks.
And as for ethics, wouldn't know it if it bit them on the nose.
RONALD REAGAN = DIVORCED CANDIDATE
He's your hero isn't he?
These people are mental or so far out on an agenda they have no perspective at all...
The later I presume---
FRED THOMPSON = DIVORCED ALSO
How about waves of laughter? hahahahahaha!
Why, you can hardly walk down any street in America these days without tripping over a married lesbian family with no values burning flags.
Of course, most of their idiot neocon lemmings will swallow it hook, line and sinker.
But, marcodele , you're right the party faithful will buy this hook, line, and sinker just like a bunch of KKK members at a rally !
Lol
just doesn't cut it when they are directly responsible for the deaths of 2700 family members in Iraq and blowing up and crippling another 27,000 American family members there as well. We aren't buying the "moral value" business any longer, so pick another topic to try out for size. George Bush said it was "necessary for them to die." Think about the word "necessary" and how despicable that is.
Posted by gkc99 at 01:24 PM : Jun 05, 2007
I second the nomination
It could co-incide with the release of his new book: "How To Serve Divorce Papers On Your Wife As She Lays in a Hospital Dying of Cancer With Your Latest Girlfriend At Your Side."
just doesn't cut it when they are directly responsible for the deaths of 2700 family members in Iraq and blowing up and crippling another 27,000 American family members there as well. We aren't buying the "moral value" business any longer, so pick another topic to try out for size. George Bush said it was "necessary for them to die." Think about the word "necessary" and how despicable that is.
Posted by jiminoregon at 03:16 PM : Jun 05, 2007
I have thought about it and it makes me sick. I was disgusted this past month when the Democrats just bowed down and authorized more money to continue the killing when, if they had all stuck together, they could have stopped it.
Just pathetic
1870-1930: The wealthiest 10% of Americans owns more than 70% of the nations wealth. Their gift to America: the Great Depression.
1930-1980: The wealthiest 10% of Americans owns less than 60% of the nations wealth. The 'Greatest Generation' were a bunch of labor socialists, but built America into the greatest nation on earth.
1980-present: The wealthiest 10% owns more than 70% again, the middle class is squeezed and families are impacted.
If Republicans believe in strong families they should try to redistribute wealth so families can be strong again and both parents don't have to be overworked to make ends meet. We need to get back to where the wealthiest 10% own about 60% of the nations wealth, so 'fairness' can take its place next to 'freeness' in the nations future.
Who cares about homosexual civil unions, that's not the real issue and one I am overtly going to avoid. The impasse between two incontrovertible viewpoints is the real issue and that's where families are getting hurt. Although Democrats of late don't seem to give a *** either, which will only encourage voters to vote Republican again. Fair enough. But I digress.
With offshoring and its effect on Americans, we know which values are taking precedent.
Most Americans seems to be more worried about two ***** in New Jersey than they are the future for the children and our country.
In Europe, the more religious the nation, the lower the divorce rate. America is more religious than any European country, yet has a divorce rate higher than any of them. Go ahead and emphasize 'personal responsibility' if you want, at some point peoples lives are impacted by their larger socioeconomic environment. America's attachment to economic freedom impacts families negatively in the current environment. I believe we've strayed too far from the America FDR created, an America in which families were strong because the middle-class was strong. And yes, that means strong 'economically', not just religiously.
Members of the GOP should focus on their OWN family.
what forgiving hearts those republicans have, unless you're liberal, in which case your every indiscretion and mistake condemns you to hell.
*****************************
I'm married and have been for forty years, and there is not one of these bird-brain Republican candidates that I would vote for. Republicans could care less about families. All they care about is bashing ***. They are dispicible.
Work two (2) jobs, to make up for the : Wage Loss
Who's raising the children ? ? ?
Where's - The Family Unit Gone ? ? ?
Excellent History and Example
of the Republician Attitude - Towards Building
"Family Values"
Lastdance
The Bush family, the Cheney family, the Bill Gates family, the Walton family, etc.
If they choose Rudy Giuliani as their next candidate, maybe you can add the Corleone family to the list.
The debates are little more than "Who Wants To Be Next Year's Bob Dole"?
"We fvcked over our families and lives..
Guiliani: "I not only fvcked another woman while married, but paraded her on tv while I was still married and then humiliated my former wife by making her live in the same house with my mistress and kids. My kids don't like her...can't imagine why....."
Gingrich: I not only had an affair, I served my wife the divorce papers while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer AND managed to get another adulterer impeached for doing almost the same thing I did--(only he just got a bj and I planted my puddin' straight up the old *******) plus I did not lie about my affair under oath--lol. can't say I don't have balls"
McCain: I don't think I want to talk about the fact that my wife was my mistress and that I basically threw away the woman who stuck by me and raised my kids while I was a POW--it might make me look wishy washy"
Romney: "I never cheated--but due to my religion if I did--it wouldn't count anyway"
Yep....family values coming from any of those candidates, would be just as hypocritical as Bush pretending to know and promote democracy. Nobody's buying those lies anymore and if the family value group tries to endorse any of them--they will be seen as frauds and hypocrites too.
Does he mean the social program welfare? Because if he does he is lying. There are less than 3 MILLION Americans on the welfare rolls at this time. If the budget for these 3 million is similar to what is was when over 35 MILLION was getting handouts--we need to follow the money and see who is getting paid. Most people do not realize that the majority of welfare recipients do not get cash but get foodstamps. and that the total amount of their welfare is less than a full time job working minimum wage. Less than 3 Million is less than 1% of the population in our country. This is a *** article. If the ideas and platform of Reagan will forever define the GOP, the least they can do is keep up with the latest information on their issues.
it does no good to raise the spectre of a bogey man or tell lies that do not fit anymore--sooner or later the public will actually THINK--and then they will realize the politicians played them for fools.
ACTUALLY, MORAL COWARDICE IS HYPOCRISY. YOU MUST BE A MORAL COWARD TO PRETEND TO BE DECENT WHILE ACTUALLY LIVING SOMETHING ELSE. THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A HYPOCRITE----A MORAL COWARD.
Sometimes the ignorance of the right is breathtakingly scary.
This article sure as hell is !
Sometimes the ignorance of the right is breathtakingly scary.
Posted by toldyouso21
---------------------------
How does your definition there apply to your beloved Bill Clinton and his wife for staying with him solely for political power reasons?
You think it is just the right that is off kilter, the left and you are no different. You are a hypocrite for not having the moral fortitude to admit it is all people who act that way.
Yep....family values coming from any of those candidates, would be just as hypocritical as Bush pretending to know and promote democracy. Nobody's buying those lies anymore and if the family value group tries to endorse any of them--they will be seen as frauds and hypocrites too.
Posted by toldyouso21
------------------
There you go again, assuming that you have any clue about Romney or his religion? Why bring religion into it anyway?
It is obvious you lack moral integrity and will stoop to name calling and slander to attemp to bring others down to the gutter with you.
You are ashamed of yourself and it shows.
Posted by sparks224
------------------
I agree with this but then everyone should, both left and right.
Posted by clestes
----------------------
I wonder every time I hear this kind of complaint who it is that is writing it.
When I was in college I studied hard, went to class and did well in my grades. My roomate partied, missed class and barely pulled D's. If you equate your "stealilng from the poor with tax breaks for the rich" mentality to my college situation, you would have had me give a portion of my grades to my partying roomate. I agree that the rich should not be able to hire the expensive tax attys to "create" ways for them to pay less tax (think John Kerry). But do not expect those who work hard to pay the tax for those who do not. A flat tax would be good, would make taxes easier for everyone and cut the IRS power over everyone.
-
by jacksteen1
June 6, 2007 6:16 PM PDT
- The Republishit Party has been bereft of morals and true Christian values since Eisenhower's golfing presidency. That airhead set the tone for the rest of the bufoons of the "party of Lincoln."
-
Reply to this comment
-
See all 43 CommentsRonnie Ragoon, drooler Emperor, aligned his party with the 'christian' reich, Falwell (happily enough, dead and in Hell today), Robertson, and the rest of the charlatans. The gun nutjob lobby also got stroked and coddled by Ronnie...in between bowls of pudding and imaginings that he was really a war hero instead of a two-bit, second-rate actor that merely portrayed heroes.
Ragoon emptied the loonie bins across the nation...those people that did not die the first Winter are still out there, living in shelters and preying upon each other. This is the Republiscum Party's dream - having poor people kill and eat each other.
Anyone who purports to be Christian simply cannot be a member or supporter of the Republishit Party. Pure and simple. They are the embodiment of evil and will surely rot in Hell - along with the pantheon of Republicrap presidents that have disgraced our Nation...and the 'evangelists' that assisted them in The Great Lie.